Paul Siguqa, owner of the Klein Goederust wine farm in Franschhoek in South Africa’s Western Cape province, is an unlikely figure in the country’s wine industry. His journey into wine, even more so. It starts on the Backsberg farm, less than 15km from the one he owns today, where he grew up watching his mother work as a laborer for over 30 years during South Africa’s apartheid era.
“Growing up on those farms as children of farm laborers, there’s this automatic narrative that you will become a farm laborer yourself,” says Siguqa, referring to the term as ‘intergenerational labor’. In sharp contrast to system.” Referring to an apartheid-era policy where workers were paid a portion of their salary in cheap wine or alcohol, the system is now illegal in South Africa, but still casts a long shadow in the country today. “The effects of the system will be with the wine industry for many years to come,” he adds. “In fact, in my class growing up, we knew who the system children were because they were fetal alcohol syndrome kids.”
